Valley LIVING Publishes Piece On Local Jail Reform

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The latest issue of the free paper, Valley LIVING, includes the column, "Locked Up On Liberty Street", in which I urge the adoption of policies that help inmates at our local jail maintain stronger family ties. LIVING magazine is available at Red Front Grocery, the Park View Credit Union and numerous other locations in the area.

Many of us in the Harrisonburg area frequently drive by our local jail on South Liberty Street without realizing that there are some 350 of our neighbors packed together in that facility, some 20% of them simply awaiting trial. And if you happen to come by on a weekend visitation day, you will find numerous family members, parents, children, grandparents, siblings and others waiting to spend a half hour with a loved one behind bars.

Rockingham-Harrisonburg Regional Jail

Needless to say, being incarcerated can create high levels of stress for already fragile families, often resulting in traumatized and neglected children, broken relationships, financial crises, and increased costs of foster care and other social services. So an important part of rehabilitating offenders is helping them maintain strong family and community ties.

Meet inmate John Doe, an all too typical young father who is behind in his child support payments and is waiting for his third court hearing. Like all too many others, he has made some bad choices that have resulting in his having a second DUI, losing his job as a truck driver and contributing to the breakup of his marriage. But he does love his two-year-old son and five-year-old daughter, and would like to be able to support them while still paying his other bills and keeping up with his rent. But he’s overwhelmed by all of his problems and has been getting further and further behind.

Unfortunately, while he is behind bars the interest and penalties on his child support payments continue to add up, making his financial problems seem ever more hopeless.

Some communities have come up with some fresh approaches like 1) Drug and Alcohol Courts with alternative sentencing and treatment options, 2) Day Reporting Programs that have offenders continue to work while checking in every day and submitting to regular drug and alcohol tests, 3) In-home detention, with or without the use of ankle bracelet technology, and 4) Having more pretrial cases released on bond while awaiting hearings.

Without such options, John Doe’s life is on hold. On the looked-forward-to visitation day, he is brought to a visitation booth in handcuffs and in orange prison garb to see his mother, dad and/or his estranged wife, who sometimes bring his children with them to see their Daddy. During their 30-minutes together they are separated by a wall of concrete and steel and have to speak through a glass window, along with a row of other visitors.

Meanwhile someone among his family and friends must see to it that they pay the Jail $30 a month ($1 per day) in "rent" for him to be behind bars. Otherwise he will not be able to able to purchase highly overpriced personal items at the commissary (11¢ for a packet of ketchup or mayo, $1 an ounce for coffee, 75¢ for a styrofoam coffee cup, and 10¢ for a plastic stirring spoon). Phone service is also expensive, limiting the number of collect calls his friends or family members may be able to accept.

Any changes at our local facility that could help offenders and their families financially--and enable them to stay in closer touch with each other and with a supportive community--could greatly help them mend their lives and heal their relationships.

Locked up on Liberty Street

As we choose our candidate for County Sheriff this fall, we need to remember that one of their major responsibilities is the operation of the local Harrisonburg-Rockingham Regional Jail.

Located on 25 South Liberty Street, the HRRJ remains beyond overcrowded with some 300 men and women inmates, and is efficiently managed by a dedicated and overworked staff. But like most institutions of its kind, there are plenty of problems to be addressed. How can an experience behind bars best rehabilitate offenders?

In parenting classes I stress the importance of time-outs as a good consequence for misbehaving children. Perhaps incarceration can be thought of as a humane kind of “time out” for misbehaving adults, certainly preferable to public stocks, floggings and other past forms of torture and humiliation.

But as with any good consequences, a first word to keep in mind is Reasonable. The most effective punishment is not necessarily the longest or harshest. This is an issue for which courts are responsible rather than the sheriff, of course, but we should all be asking, If a three month sentence is good for a given offender, is a year in the same steel cage really four times more effective? The law of diminishing returns sets in at a point where the resentment an offender feels outweighs the learning value of the punishment.

I am not in favor of pampering prisoners, but one might also question the reasonableness of charging local inmates $1 an ounce for coffee, 75¢ for a styrofoam coffee cup, and 10¢ for a plastic stirring spoon. Maybe offenders should be glad for any coffee, period, no matter how expensive. But it’s usually innocent family members who have to pick up the tab. Our jail is among the few in the state that charges $1 a day for a room and board fee as permitted by Virginia law. Until at least half of that is paid in a given month, inmates can’t purchase a single canteen item, not even a pricey 11¢ packet of ketchup for a hamburger. This results in families either having to pay a $365 annual levy, plus cash for the steeply priced canteen items, or having their inmates doing without things as basic as deodorant. Is that reasonable?

A second word associated with good consequences is Respectful. To humiliate either a disobedient child or a lawbreaking adult is not a good way to get positive results. At our local jail, simple respect might mean not requiring inmates to be in handcuffs and wearing blaze orange prison suits when brought into the visitor booth--a small room with no escape exit and where inmates and guests are separated by a wall of solid concrete, steel and glass. Even state penitentiaries don’t impose this kind of indignity.

A third R of good consequences is Restorative. Any corrections facility should seek to rehabilitate and correct rather than simply punish, and should see to it that offenders make full restitution for their wrongs. This means more provisions being made for nonviolent prisoners to be under house arrest, in jail work-release programs, or on well supervised parole or probation (and regularly undergoing drug testing) while being required to work to support themselves and their families and otherwise pay off their debt to society. Otherwise it is you and I as taxpayers who get to pay for their crimes.

The latter, of course, is another matter over which a sheriff has little direct control, but his or her willingness to provide the necessary supervision for such programs is critical. But in the end, it is up to all of us citizens to help make our system of correction more reasonable, respectful and restorative.

Which, by the way, is an approach that could also save us taxpayers a bundle.

What do you think?

When Our Health Care Systems Fail, Jails House Our 'Refuse'

RMH/Sentara website

"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, (your) wretched refuse..."

- Emma Lazarus

These words inscribed on the Stature of Liberty could well be on the entrances of our jails and prisons, but as a message of despair rather than of hope. It is sad that these facilities have become the human landfills of last resort for those not only who commit crimes and/or are waiting their trials, but also for the homeless, mentally ill and substance addicted for whom we have no alternative solution.

The following is a recent case in point:

Joe Smith (not his real name) was found by someone at Our Community Place in extreme physical and mental distress over a week ago due to an overdose of K-9, a synthetic form of marijuana. "Joe", in his mid-forties, is alcoholic and chronically homeless, and has been a frequent guest and volunteer at OCP.

Joe had already lost bowel control and was in and out of a comatose state when he was picked up off the street and brought to OCP for help. A staff member there called the Community Services Board, who agreed to see him for an assessment. 

After three hours at the CSB, Joe was told that he could become a part of their outpatient program and be put on a list to receive acupuncture and other substance abuse treatment, but since he had no insurance that would cover inpatient treatment--and the only such facility that would be available had a waiting list of over a year--that there was nothing they could do help him. So they recommended he be taken to the emergency room at RMH/Sentara. 

There Joe had to wait for three hours for the psych evaluation team, who after several more hours told him that unless he could be diagnosed as acutely mentally ill and/or suicidal, that they simply had no bed available for him. This in spite of his literally begging for medical and other help to detox and to save his life.

Since the OCP also has no beds for such people, Joe had to be put back out on the streets, where the next morning a police officer found him lying along the sidewalk in a stupor. So he was picked up and brought to jail, where he will remain until he has his court date in several weeks.

In jail. Locked in a steel cage for lack of a detox treatment center.

Can't our community do better than that?